Vigil
by Simply-Cath
Summary: We never had much in common aside from the drugs." Billy reminded him


Well, I think this is one of the darkest stories I've ever written and I'm really pleased with how it turned out.   
  
TITLE: Vigil  
AUTHOR: Catherine  
EMAIL: Cath_Semerjian@hotmail.com  
DISCLAIMER: I don't own the characters involved. They belong to themselves and their names are copywrited to both NWA:TNA and WWE. This isn't meant to depict reality, it's a work of fiction. I'm not trying to imply anythiing about the preferences/habits/orientation of the characters herein. I'm not profiting from this either.  
DISTRIBUTION: Kai of course, anyone else please ask for my permission first.  
RATING: R  
CONTENT: Drug use, implied m/m slash, language, disturbing themes  
SPOILERS: None   
SUMMARY: "We never had much in common aside from the drugs." Billy reminded him.  
  
Vigil  
By: Catherine  
  
He was in dangerous territory tonight, among people who were not his own, on their turf. And they made sure he was aware of it. They kept their eyes on him, suspicious. Even the people he used to work with stared at him like an interloper. Billy Kidman pretended not to notice as he walked through the lobby of the Nashville hotel, heading directly for the elevator.  
  
He rode the elevator, digging his nails into the palms of his hands to keep from beating his fist against his thigh nervously. He hated that habit. He hated a lot of his habits.  
  
The ding of the elevator reaching the floor startled him. Billy glanced up, as if the numbers were deceiving him, then sighed and stepped out on to the dark green carpet, taking a deep breath. He pulled a card out of the back pocket of his blue jeans, double checking the room number he'd already memorized. Billy began heading towards the room. When he got there the door was open. As he stepped inside, he said goodbye to the real world and prepared to enter one that he'd vowed never to indulge in again.  
  
The man he was here to see was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the king sized bed, as if meditating. But his eyes were open and staring at the door, staring at him.  
  
Billy cleared his throat. "Raven," he said coolly, sticking to the ring name as he always did. Calling him by his wrestling persona established a distance Billy desperately needed when dealing with this man.  
  
"Billy," Raven returned, just as calm. He didn't get up. "You came."  
  
"You asked." It had been a hell of a lot more complicated than that. He'd agonized for days over whether or not to show up, before he finally decided to. This was something he needed to do, to make sure he'd changed. There had been a time when he would have done anything Raven asked, anything to be in his presence because being around Raven had always led to such good feelings inside him.  
  
"Take a seat."  
  
Billy sat in a chaise by the window and crossed his legs, looking away as if he could see through the dawn curtains.  
  
The initial small talk was short and stilted. Neither was comfortable talking to the other. Raven commented on the haircut and asked how Torrie and some of the others were. Billy answered his questions and asked a few of his own about how Raven was enjoying working for TNA. But they ran out of safe topics. Billy glanced down at his watch. They'd only been together for seven minutes.  
  
As the silence wore on, Billy drew his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. Pressing his forehead to his left knee, he began to rock back and forth like an autistic child. It was something he was used to doing around Raven. It was something he always found himself doing when he started coming down.  
  
"Stop that, Kidman."  
  
Billy stopped. But within minutes, he wanted to do it again. Yet another impulsive habit he had to get rid of. One he had to see if he could get rid of.  
  
The silence grated like shards of glass over the two men. There was nothing else for them to discuss except what had brought them together so many times before, but for a different reason this evening. "How long have you been clean?" Billy asked, closing his eyes.  
  
"Not as long as you have, but long enough. I haven't slipped, can't exactly afford to."  
  
Billy nodded his understanding. "Same here. Just a few beers once in a while."  
  
"Although I'm sure you have quite the support-"  
  
"Torrie doesn't know anything about what happened. Eddie suspects, but he's never tried talking to me about it." Billy snapped defensively, as if proving that he too could kick the habits by himself.  
  
The silence fell again, weighing on them. Billy shivered and huddled in on himself more tightly as if trying to make a smaller target of himself. He rested his cheek on his knee, staring at the wall. "Around this time I'd be asking you what you had." He murmured thoughtfully as hazy nondescript memories seemed to play out on the wall in front of him like movies at a drive-in.  
  
"And I would pull out my bag and we'd decide what to do and how much of it to do for the night." Raven returned, his voice equally quiet and contemplative. "Or we'd be going out and seeing what favours we could pick up."  
  
"Do you even remember how we started doing this together?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Me neither."  
  
Silence fell again. Billy squirmed under it. The lack of sound was unbearable. Normally they'd be talking shit about their management by now, or babbling or crying and screaming at each other; or one of them would be trying to draw the other into his hallucination. And even if they were quiet, there was always the haze of drugs to make things comfortable. Now there was only the muted clanging of pipes in the walls.  
  
"Do you want anything to drink?" Raven asked, stretching out on his back and staring up at the ceiling.  
  
"No," Billy said quickly. He didn't want to accept anything from Raven, not ever again.  
  
There had been a time where he gladly swallowed or injected anything Raven gave him. He'd come to associate Raven with good times and good feelings, with sensations that he couldn't duplicate own his own. Billy still wouldn't know where to buy a joint to save his life. He'd always gone to Raven because Raven always had the goodies and he was always willing to share.  
  
Whenever they got together it was an orgy of sex, booze and anything illegal that could get into their bloodstreams. Billy didn't have many clear memories of their nights together. It got so that he was able to guess what happened from the way his body felt, from the different symptoms. Headache and nausea was booze. Sore back was insane sex. Pot always left his fingers and feet tingling. Coke left him with a dry mouth and a runny nose. Painkillers usually left him lying on the bed, feeling as if his body had turned to lead. And since he usually did more than of those a night, he learned to interpret multiple symptoms as well.  
  
He almost always had a sore back.  
  
Like so many things, he couldn't quite recall when sex got thrown into their relationship. It had been one of the last things, probably some crazed impulse when they were high; probably some time after they'd started experimenting with Ecstasy. Billy did remember that his only clue about what happened that first time was Raven sleeping naked next to him and the caked blood between his thighs. And it happened a lot because in the bars they started going to, Billy's name became synonymous with 'tweaked out twink'. Although I was probably too stoned and/or high to be fem, he thought idly, scratching the spot on his arm where he used to shoot up. Or rather, when he'd show up at Raven's drop to his knees at Raven's feet and hold out his arm as if expecting a Christmas present instead of a syringe.  
  
"Why are you doing this to me?" Billy wondered, out of a desperate desire to dispel the silence.  
  
"Because you were a trigger for me. If you were around, then I wanted to use. I want to see if I can spend the night with you, without thinking about using."  
  
"Are you thinking about it too?"  
  
"Fuck yes." Raven replied, rubbing his palms over his eyes as if he didn't like what he was seeing. "We never used to be this quiet."  
  
"We never had much in common aside from the drugs." Billy reminded him. On an impulse, he rose to his feet and lay down beside Raven, feeling him tense up, but he didn't complain.   
  
Instead the silence seemed to fall more heavily upon them. It was so thick and so suffocating that Billy almost considered fucking the other man, if only to generate some noise.   
  
But Raven ended the draught with a question. "Why did you stop, Kidman? I had to, I physically had to, but what about you?"  
  
"I had to," Billy echoed. "I couldn't take the gaps in my memory, being totally clueless of what happened to me from Thursday to Tuesday. I couldn't take the way I felt. The taste in my mouth, the way I couldn't eat for days and had to pretend water was vodka just to keep it down."  
  
"Was it hard for you to stop too?" Raven asked. "I have memories of being curled up on my bed crying and screaming and all I wanted was another hit or another drink…"  
  
Billy nodded. "I thought I was dying. Or that I was in hell. I puked my guts out for more than a week. And I stopped when I was rehabbing my shoulder. So on top of puking, crying and spontaneous orgasms, I couldn't move my arm. I was in rough shape."  
  
"I'd heard that happens to some people." Raven mused.  
  
"Messy and I was in no state to enjoy them. Hell, I was a fucking mess. Torrie was ready to give me the last rites. She still thinks it was the stomach flu from hell. It's a damned good thing I wasn't working at the time. Someone would have wound up dead, probably me."  
  
A source of pride for Billy was that none of his addictions had ever affected his work. His travelling, sleeping and any other time he wasn't at the arena suffered – but never his work. The moment he hit the parking lot, he would be thinking about what would be happening at the hotel or in the bar. Anticipating the rush of the first hit, the hot/cold glide of alcohol down his throat or the sweet smoke fogging up his lungs and his mind was a source of constant distraction. It was amazing he hadn't caused any traffic accidents in his haste.  
  
"I think you came to see me in my hotel room, asking about how I was going to book the Flock," Raven said abruptly, though his voice wasn't loud nor was his tone particularly excited. "We had a few drinks and might have smoked a couple of joints. Sometimes these things come back to me if I think about them for a while."  
  
Billy nodded as if he agreed. But there were so many things he didn't want to remember about those times. Because he feared he might just remember the good and none of the bad. Although how could he forget puking on countless sidewalks, being too stoned to move and drunk enough to fall over? The bad always outweighed the good. He couldn't let himself forget that.  
  
"Billy?"  
  
"Yes, Scott?" He didn't notice the slip and wouldn't have minded even if he had.  
  
"Stay the night?"  
  
Billy opened his mouth to protest, but instead simply curled up on his side, his head resting on Scott's shoulder. Scott's arm slipped around him, surprisingly warm.  
  
  
That's how they woke up the next morning. They awakened around the same time, but neither was particularly inclined to move.  
  
"It's so strange to wake up next to you and feel no pain." Scott said by way of greeting. "At least we know we can be in each other's presence sober. We did it."  
  
"I was just thinking that." The other man replied, rising to his feet and straightening out his clothes, then slipping on his shoes. Scott met him as he put his hand on the doorknob. "I'll see you around, Scott," he said softly, staring up into his eyes and smiling to show he meant it.  
  
"See you then, Peter."  
  
He shuddered and exited the room, closing the door behind him. It looked like a long walk back to the elevator.  
  
THE END  
  
I haven't had this one looked over yet, so my apologies if there are any spelling or grammar mistakes.  
  
Hope you liked it,  
Cath  



End file.
